Tag Archives: habit

When the economy is in the tank, more Americans drown their sorrows in alcohol. The number of U.S. adults drinking booze is at a 25-year high, according to a new Gallup poll. Gallup, which has been keeping track of U.S. drinking habits for the last 71 years, reports that while the numbers move up and down slightly each year, the statistics on American drinking are surprisingly steady. Is drinking a habit that is impossible to stop?

Well, one of the most consistent and robust findings in behavioral sciences supports the notion that our behavior is, to a great extent, habitual and that we encounter difficulties in changing our behavior for the better because we are creatures of habit. However, Chatzisarantis & Hagger’s (2010) recent study indicated that implementation intentions have been shown to be an effective self-regulatory strategy influencing habit performance. In general, implementation intentions are conditional statements of intentions, commonly known as if–then plans, taking the form “If a performance context z arises, then I will do x.” In the case of stopping drinking, implementation intentions were operationally defined as strategic plans linking socializing goals to strategies facilitating refusal of alcohol. For example, if it is Friday night at the local pub, as soon as a friend or a fellow student offers me an alcoholic drink, I will refuse it by . . . (report what you are going to do or say.). Their study demonstrated that goal-related implementation exercises linking socializing goals to behavioral tendencies to refuse alcohol reduced the acceptance of an offer of a free alcoholic drink among habitual drinkers, as well as nonhabitual drinkers. These findings indicate that goal-related implementation exercises are effective in obstructing habitual health risk behaviors, such as drinking alcohol.